@article {592286,
	title = {(No) Harm in Asking: Class, Acquired Cultural Capital, and Academic Engagement at an Elite University},
	journal = {Sociology of Education},
	volume = {89},
	number = {1},
	year = {2016},
	pages = {1-15},
	abstract = {How do undergraduates engage authority figures in college? Existing explanations predict class-based engagement strategies. Using in-depth interviews with 89 undergraduates at an elite university, I show how undergraduates with disparate precollege experiences differ in their orientations toward and strategies for engaging authority figures in college. Middle-class undergraduates report being at ease in interacting with authority figures and are proactive in doing so. Lower-income undergraduates, however, are split. The\&nbsp;privileged poor{\textemdash}lower-income undergraduates who attended boarding, day, and preparatory high schools{\textemdash}enter college primed to engage professors and are proactive in doing so. By contrast, the\&nbsp;doubly disadvantaged{\textemdash}lower-income undergraduates who remained tied to their home communities and attended local, typically distressed high schools{\textemdash}are more resistant to engaging authority figures in college and tend to withdraw from them. Through documenting the heterogeneity among lower-income undergraduates, I show how static understandings of individuals{\textquoteright} cultural endowments derived solely from family background homogenize the experiences of lower-income undergraduates. In so doing, I shed new light on the cultural underpinnings of education processes in higher education and extend previous analyses of how informal university practices exacerbate class differences among undergraduates.},
	author = {Anthony Abraham Jack}
}
